I'm Reading Comeeks

Note: I did not read the german edition, that is just the only one with the correct cover art and contains issues 1-4.   Also, I will spoil the end of this comic.  But, don't worry you won't care.

The Evil Within is a comic prequel to the Evil Within survival horror video game.  As a prequel one would think that the history/backstory would be revealed and therefore, it could be easily understood by someone (like me) who had never even heard of the game before.

That is not the case here.  After I read through it, I could sense that there were things I was supposed to be noticing.  At first I figured these things would be revealed and explained by the end of the comic.  I was wrong.

For example in early scenes of the character remembering the day her friend went missing there is an obviously strange dude in the background of the scene.  I applauded myself for noticing him and figured that by the end he would be revealed to be the villain and I'd understand how and why he kidnapped a kid in broad daylight in the blink of an eye, never to be seen again.

It turns out that not only is the how and why not explained at all, but the whole reasoning behind all the horrific events was lacking.  At the end of it...I was more confused than frightened.  The main character has all these visions of dark moments in the other character's lives, but there isn't much time for speculation as the group flees one bizarre freakshow with an axe and runs into a crazy braces wearing bloodspider freak thing, called Laura apparently.  

Why is the bloodspider thing called Laura?  I'm assuming she was a student at the school where the survivors encountered her, but why she can rise up from a puddle of blood (from Hell I'm assuming), why she's so pissed off and why she's a spider thing, I have no clue.  The book definitely has a nightmare quality, but for me even my nightmares have more plot.

One guy thinks that they are being punished for past bad deeds. All the characters had some misfortune in the past, but only one person actually committed a terrible act, and even that wasn't because they wanted to/meant to harm people.  It just seems flimsy.  The end is basically everyone's just part of some sick experiment?  I'm confused.

Each chapter was done by a different artist, but none of them could maintain a single look for any of the characters, from something as simple as hair/skin color to facial features and one artist often making the characters look as if their arms had been amputated after the elbow, the art is just all over the place. 

 Anyway.  For kicks I took a look at a Let's Play video of The Evil Within and even watching two minutes of that gave me more insight into the game/comic than I got from this comic.  It was also a lot scarier and tons more suspenseful.

So, art was unpolished at best, storyline was pretty much non-existent, the plot was predictable and the characters weren't well developed and mattered little since they all died in the end.

This is just spin-off crap meant to make money or sell more copies of the game.  No substance.